I did something previously unthinkable yesterday. I opened a Weasyl account and started migrating my content (yeah, there's not very much and it's no good but there's a principle here). I've never joined in the Chicken Littles yelling that the sky was falling every time there was a change to FA. I was happy here and I'd never even thought of opening a Weasyl account. This change feels totally different and I think it's time to go. Once I'm transferred, I'm going to remove all the visual art from this account.

The person running any service is always an easy target to scream at when people fear change but, whatever people said about Neer, he wears a tail like the rest of us. I believe he started FA for the right reason, our fur family, not to get rich.

I've worked for big corporates for a long time so here's my prediction on how IMVU/FA relationship is going to play out:

As far as I have been able to determine, the new servers that were destined to host FA haven't been purchased so the current hardware is still overstretched and something needs to be done. As has been said elsewhere, IMVU is a very lean company that seeks to drive down costs as well as increasing revenue. Knowing this, unless they are concerned about possible DDoSes affecting the stability of their other offerings, I just can't see them wanting to spend out on hosting FA as a remote island long-term when they can leverage economies of scale by bringing it into a data centre they already operate. They probably already have hardware available in their facilities that is at least as good, if not more powerful, than that which Neer was going to buy.

I don't think it's unkind to say that Neer and the guys are decent server people but there are better website coders out there and IMVU has some of them on staff. I envisage IMVU offering help with the coding, maintenance and improvements to FA until they understand it and are involved in it on a daily basis. Once the data storage and code are understood and rationalized, I suspect there will be a major hardware upgrade announced which will be the move to IMVU hosting. IMVU's data centre guys will be looking after the hardware from there on in.

Now, IMVU has physical possession of all of FA's data and physical hardware in their own data centre so the original server guys have nothing to do. Their web team understand its workings at least as well as the original designers, if not better now that they've upgraded the code. How long is a lean company going to hang on to staff they don't need once they have the IP? I predict Neer and the team will be gone within 6-12 months.

It appears that Panderp may have a claim to ownership of a percentage of the original FA business. I don't know whether IMVU know about his possible claim or not. He is, however, not in the best health and I don't think he has the stamina for a drawn out and expensive legal fight with a company who can afford big lawyers. If IMVU are unaware of his claim, it would make sense that the person who sold them a business with an undeclared encumbrance would want to deny that it was true. If Panderp made a successful claim, the seller would likely become the target of legal action from IMVU themselves as they will have signed in the contract of sale that they had the right to sell the business and IMVU will want their losses from the bad sale made good. Regardless of what the legal position is, once IMVU have physical possession of the code, data and hardware on which FA runs in their data centre, winning will be very difficult because, as they say, "Possession is 9/10 of the law."

Once the original FA team have gone, IMVU will be free to monetize FA as they see fit. Think non-furry advertising, payment required for certain features (buy your Furbucks here), artists selling commissions being considered chargeable advertising and so on... Once they are the operator, as a corporate, IMVU also become a much more attractive name-and-shame target for the fur-haters. If they don''t "clean FA up", all the stuff on it can be used to damage their brand(s) until they clean FA or drop it.

With the bean-counters in charge, if the perceived losses to the IMVU brand outweigh the revenues from FA, I can see no way this will end well.

All these things may well be moot anyway. As I think most of us would admit, furs are a distrustful, nervous and skittish bunch. FA has a feel of community. I'm just not sure that community will accept a site run by someone who isn't "one of us." I think it's a shame; I was one of the donors to the last campaign. I felt like I was doing a good thing for everyone by giving. I haven't received my FA T-Shirt yet and now I'm not sure I'll ever feel proud to wear it.

*I'm not the fox with his paw always on the pulse. If I've got any of my facts wrong please let me know so I can correct them and improve my opinion.